What If It Were Your Son?
by isabella2004
Summary: Ben Stone ponders Jack Curry's question in 'The Reaper's Helper.'


**This story is based on a scene from Season 1, episode 3 'The Reaper's Helper,' and a photograph that always sat behind Ben's desk of Michael Moriarty and his son.**

**I own nothing.**

**August 1990**

He wasn't sure what to make of Jack Curry.

He looked like a normal guy. Like someone you might pass on the street and not give a second glance. Early thirties, dark hair, neat clothes...he certainly didn't have 'killer' tattooed on his forehead.

_But then, what killer ever does?_

Julia DeBakey certainly wasn't your average criminal defence attorney. Dedicated, ferocious, determined...the best civil rights attorney in the state, or so Paul had reminded him when she had shown up for Curry's interrogation full of quiet righteous indignation. Or had it just been smugness at the knowledge that she was about to land what would probably be the biggest case of her career?

Whichever it was, she wasn't exactly someone a regular person would have on their speed dial.

_But after all, he's done this before._

He had offered her a seat when they had entered his office and she had swiftly declined, preferring to stand behind Curry, arms folded, like some sort of bodyguard, ready to pounce should he ask or say anything that she deemed to be improper or irrelevant. Not to mention the fact that she was looking at him as if he had no right in the world to even be prosecuting this case.

According to a fair proportion of the city's population, she was right.

"You're saying Bobby Holland might have reconsidered. If he'd reconsidered my client wouldn't be here."

She was good at trying to make it sound so simple, so straightforward. There was nothing about the whole damn case that was straightforward. If there was, then he wouldn't already be having sleepless nights about it. "I don't know that, you don't know that and even _you_ don't know that Mr Curry. You were involved in those cases in California. Do you have a stake in getting these people to die?"

Curry shook his head, seeming faintly amused at the very suggestion. "No, Mr Stone, I don't."

"Did you try to talk Bobby Holland out of it?"

"_Several_ times over _several_ hours. He didn't want to turn into a zombie." Curry paused and eyed him curiously. "What if it were your son, Mr Stone?"

He paused.

_Peter..._

His image flashed before him, the thick dark hair he was so far refusing to get cut falling into his eyes, his smile wide and infectious, his mouth and cheeks smeared with the chocolate ice cream his sister Pamela had just pushed into his face...twelve years old and so full of life and innocence.

If it were him...if it had been Peter Stone instead of Bobby Holland who had been given the news that he might not live to see old age, if Peter had confided in _him_ and begged _him_ to end his life, the way Bobby Holland had asked _his_ father to...?

_Dear God let it never happen. Please don't ever let my boy have to face those choices._

_Please don't ever let _me_ have to face those choices._

He knew the answer.

It was relatively simple.

It was why Bobby Holland's father hadn't been able to pull the trigger.

"If it were _my_ son? I'd take him to every hospital in America to try and save him."

Julia stepped forwards decisively. "We'll plead to promoting a suicide."

"You'll plead to manslaughter one," he shot back, forcing himself to think about the case in front of him rather than the horrors of what-ifs. "We'll...drop the other charges and we'll make a sentencing recommendation."

She shook her head, seemingly in faint disbelief. "Bobby Holland intended to shoot himself. Manslaughter one is an admission my _client_ intended to shoot him."

_Jesus Christ, he _did_ shoot him!_

"He didn't shoot him full of penicillin."

Julia eyeballed him silently for a long moment. She knew he was a parent, just like he knew that she was too. He couldn't help but wonder what had gone through _her_ mind when Curry had posed his question. She turned towards Curry and lifted her bag. Whatever she had thought, she wasn't about to share it. "We're finished here Jack."

Curry got to his feet and then turned back to face him. "Mr Stone, I hope you never have to face these choices yourself. I hope you never see anyone dying the way I've seen people dying. But if you do...I hope you have the courage to do whatever has to be done."

_Whatever has to be done...just like that? _

_One minute, Bobby Holland was alive and the next..._

Paul shifted in his seat as the door closed behind them. "She's got a point."

"About what?" he asked irritably.

"About the intent required for a manslaughter plea."

"So you think we should plead him down?"

"I don't know..." Paul shook his head. "Whatever we decide to do with this case, it's going to make us unpopular with _someone._"

"Popularity isn't the motivating factor here, Paul, it's what's right under the law." He put on his glasses and shuffled the papers on his desk, ostensibly looking for nothing yet wanting to create the opposite impression. "Do we have a copy of the ME's report?"

"It should be in there."

"Well it isn't. Can you please find it?"

Paul got his feet. He knew him well enough to get the meaning behind the request. "Sure. I think I have one somewhere."

"Thank you."

Alone at last, he swung his chair around to look at the array of pictures on the shelf behind him. He and his parents...Laura and the kids...the four of them together, odd perhaps for a divorced couple but he liked the picture. It had been taken in happier times, much happier times.

Then there was his favourite, if he was allowed to have one. It was a simple black and white shot of him, wearing an off white sweater that Laura's mother had given him for Christmas one year and with far more hair than he presently enjoyed, and Peter as a baby. He remembered the photograph being taken. He remembered Peter struggling in his arms and Laura waving and cooing to him to try to get him to look at the camera whilst she simultaneously tried to take a shot that wouldn't turn out to be blurry beyond recognition.

He had loved it the moment he had seen it.

He didn't look at it enough.

He didn't look at _them_ enough.

_What if were your son, Mr Stone?_

He checked his watch. The kids would still be at school. He'd try to get home early and call them before they went to bed. He would talk to Laura about seeing them this weekend.

It had been too long.

_What if it were your son?_


End file.
